Healthy jobs report a good sign for future growth

The economy added 203,000 jobs in November, according to Friday's job report, showing strength across multiple sectors and encouraging hopes that the upward trend may be sustained.

“I think, on balance, it’s a very good report,” Mark Hamrick, the Washington bureau chief for Bankrate.com, told Yahoo's Mark Nesto. “We came into this report kind of wondering, ‘Could a better than expected October report be sustained?’ The answer clearly this morning with this report is yes.”

"It's hinting very, very strongly that the economy is starting to ramp up, that growth is getting better, that businesses are hiring," Joel Naroff, president of Naroff Economic Advisors, told ABC News.

The 203,000 new jobs combined with 800,000 people estimated to have rejoined the workforce, leading unemployment to dip to 7 percent and the labor force participation rate to climb ever so slightly to 63.0 percent from last month's 35-year low of 62.8 percent.

"The health care, transportation/warehousing and manufacturing industries all added significantly to the jobs number in November. The largest gains were in transportation and warehousing, which rose by 31,000 with jobs added for couriers, truck transportation and warehousing storage," said Samantha Sharf at Forbes.

"The fact that the jobs are being created across nearly all of the major sectors of the economy is also auspicious," wrote John Cassidy at The New Yorker. "Manufacturing, transportation, and warehousing did particularly well in November, and a good number of new positions were created in retailing, health care, and professional services as well."

The labor force participation rate, which includes discouraged workers and early retirees, continued to lag, however, Cassidy said, lying still lower than 63.7 percent of a year ago. "Despite the recent pickup, the economy isn’t creating enough jobs to persuade early retirees and other discouraged workers who have given up searching for work to return to the labor force," Cassidy wrote.

Cassidy does not expect the Fed to move very quickly to taper the stimulus.

"Given that broader measures of labor-market health, such as the participation rate and the employment-to-population rate, remain depressed, I think the Fed will wait one or two more meetings before starting to “taper” its policy of quantitative easing," Cassidy wrote.